The Codec Moments’ Week Spot

It’s Thursday night: Ready, steady, Week Spot! Find out what the Codec Moments team have been up to this week in the world of gaming.

Andy: Nothing, nada, nowt

I have literally played nothing all week. But I’ve been working on some great content for the site in the guise of our exclusive interview with Jennifer Hale, one of the stars of the Metal Gear Solid and Mass Effect series and helping the Prof with an experiment (more will be revealed soon).

The other thing I’ve been busy with is preparing for the imminent release of ‘Baby Brown’, which I pre-ordered inadvertently 8 and a half months ago. To celebrate this, I decided to create a short list of games I could have been playing this week:

What have I played this week? It’s a bit of a blur in fairness, I’ve gone through a few games but not really spent a lot of time with them. There’s my obligatory hour on WATCH_DOGS where I’m creeping closer to the platinum, and at this rate I’ll have it by August… 2018. I had played a lot of Transformers for the review, but not so much since, and in fact have spent far more time watching the films. I’ve had a crack at the Sniper Elite III DLC that dropped yesterday, and there’ll be a review of that coming up, plus there’s been great news that more DLC is on the way. Save Churchill – Part 1 has landed on Steam today, will be on consoles soon, and features new weapons and a free multiplayer map. Nice!

LEGO Batman 2 was downloaded and installed as part of this month’s PS+ offering, and it’s a typical LEGO game, so will be fun. The use of the Michael Keaton Batman movie music threw me off on a nostalgia trip and works brilliantly in the sections I’ve played. Will definitely be spending time with this, just hope I don’t spread it out over 12 months like I did with LEGO Lord of the Rings. Whilst my head was stuck in the late Eighties with Batman, Cev shared the “Tacky” video by Weird Al, which fired other parts of my brain that reminded me of UHF, so his new album’s bought. It’s a lot of fun!

On the Prof’s recommendation I tried out Rafting Bears this week, and he’s right – it’s about bears that raft! Tricky as hell to control, suspect in-app purchase pricing, but it’s got that “one more go” mechanic down to a tee. And I’ve not played another game where there’s so much satisfaction in chasing a rogue bear down a river to get him back in the boat and on an oar. A side effect of this was remembering the excellent Plague Inc. that’s installed on my phone too, and I set about wiping out the world quite successfully until I’ve got to the fungal infection. My progress is more like The Last of Us than total extinction of the human race, so must try harder!

Highlights: Mandatory Fun by Weird Al – polka remixes are hilarious.

Lowlights: Greenland being too susceptible to brain death and dying off faster than they were being infected.

Roger: God of War (Vita), The Wolf Among Us (PS3) and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (PS3).

So thinking back on this past week, at first thought I had only played one game. That one game was God of War on my Vita. I did spend most of my time with it, thanks to a few slow days at work I was able to complete the story. There are few things in life that compare to getting paid to earn trophies, but that is a future job that I want. Once the main game was completed, all that was left was to attempt the God awful Challenge of the Gods missions and beating the game in under 5 hours in a speed run. The first time I played, let alone Platinumed GOW, was on the PS3 in the HD Collection and I remember the day I attempted The Challenge of the Gods. It was a very difficult task and that day is one that I will always remember. Anyways, I have the game again so I attempted to complete it once more. After flying through a couple of levels, and repeating several levels many times, I finally found myself at the start of #10: the final challenge before I earn my Gold Trophy. After failing that mission, out of habit rapidly pressed some buttons, only to find that I had deleted my progress and had to start again at the first challenge. Folks, It was then and there that I heavily contemplated giving up and never finishing it again, but my desire for completion saw me through to the end and for the second time ever I beat the Challenge of the Gods and I’ll be damned if I don’t feel good!

What else? The final episode of The Wolf Among us released and I blasted my way through it. With such a wonderful culmination of the series events during the finale, I am curious to see how they return to this interesting story.

So Far Cry 3 caught your eye? Well I got Blood Dragon for free, or really cheap and I don’t remember much of it, but I loved FC3 and I cannot wait to return to this 80’s inspired trip, or Far Cry 4 for that matter. That game looks so good.

Highlights: Completing the Challenge of The Gods on GOW 1. It may be easy for some, but I Feel totally Alpha Male.

Lowlights: Waiting to play more of the Walking Dead. We should have a new trailer later this week. Probably by the time you read this.

This week I managed to fix an issue with my 360 controller meaning all the games I have which are very keyboard unfriendly were reopened for my gaming enjoyment. That being said, my time has been focused on two games. Firstly, I finished One Finger Death Punch on grand master and still even now consider this game to be something of a simplistic masterpiece. It doesn’t have the flare you would expect a game to have, but the fun factor is there in droves. It’s still only a couple of quid (or bucks) on Steam and it’s still so minimalist that your browser of choice would give your system more trouble.

Aside from that I also validated the full price purchase of Dynasty Warriors 8 Extreme Legends Complete Edition, courtesy of my controller fixing skills, and have thus far sunk a whopping 34 hours into it these past seven days alone (Yeesh)! In that time I’ve seen through the Lu Bu storyline as well as the Wei storyline (Cao Cao’s kind of a dick, if you ask me!) and determined that my ambition mode front man is to be Zhang Liao as, despite lacking any true leadership skills, the guy knows his way around them axes.

I’m honestly surprised the game has changed so much since I last played, I had reached a point perhaps around DW5 or 6 where I didn’t feel the game was progressing far enough but in the advent of Hyrule Warrior’s announcement I found myself craving some Yellow Turban Rebellion and… just wow.

The game is still essentially as complicated as mopping a floor, but the variables thrown into place to add depth elsewhere such as ambitions modes frugality with time, lack of healing and further rewarding for restlessly pushing on after each battle in spite of these factors is a nice touch. As is the switch countering and the fact that you can switch is also not something to be disregarded. Then there’s the wealth of weapons and variations of said weapons, the game truly isn’t what I remember at all. Of course, I miss Empire mode, but there’s a lot to do here and it is Extreme Legends after all. Perhaps DW8 Empires is just around the corner. I’ve long given up on trying to understand Koei’s reasoning or logic behind the release of these games.